perfidy

A coupla observations:

-I don't understand why Moussaoui gets life but Al Qaeda executives are held in a cage in a forgotten aircraft hangar near an unmarked airstrip in remote Afghanistan.

-I don't understand how voice recorders and transcripts of the 9-11 flights had any evidenciary value in the trial. We all know what happened, and he wasn't on any of them.

-I think it remains to be seen how much mileage terrorists and the people who love them will wring from Moussaoui. I don't think it's a big stretch for him, a few years hence, to be in big demand to speak at Harvard or Berkeley or Yale. And with a life sentence, and a young man, sympathizers will have 40-odd years to put him on t shirts and placards, right along with Mumia and Che.

Not that I'm in the "fry 'im" camp, mind you. Just saying that he may benefit from martyr-scale attention without having had to die.

Hard to argue, primarily because you're correct. So I'll just quibble:

"justice and vengeance are mutually exclusive concepts"

No they're not - they're totally separate and have not a thing to do with one another, other than by accident, but they're certainly not mutually exclusive.

Well Patton and Johno, we can go even further.

We're not even talking about justice, let alone vengeance. We're talking about law, which it seems is rarely the same thing as justice.

I am often in favor of the death penalty. But I think this was a proper choice. I don't know the reasoning of those who made the choice, but to me, at least, seeing as he wasn't on the planes, his guilt is more on the lines of accessory. He helped plan the murder, but didn't pull the trigger.

As I see it, the only people who are as guilty as the 19 who stepped directly from those four planes into hell, are those who instigated the plot - the highest levels of Al Qaida. Moussaoui is pretty much small fry. Life in prison is right.

And if we can hand out a left handed eff you to the fundamentalist Muslims who hate our freedom, all to the good.

G: Of all the outcomes, and at the risk of losing any redneck kudos some might think I have, I think the proper outcome occurred. Therefore, I think justice was likely done. I define justice as "the right outcome".

Law? Actually, I get the impression from what I've read that the law may have been fiddled with by Judge Brinkema, due to what seems a distaste for the death penalty.

B: As for whether ZM was as guilty as the pig-fuckers who actually carried out the plot, the law is clear on that: He was guilty of conspiracy, by his own admission, and according to the law, he's thus fully & personally responsible for all subsequent results of the conspiracy. They could easily have executed him and been wholly within the law.

But life in prison seems quite right - he's still a young man, and will surely never be free again. That's gotta suck like a Hoover for a guy who was expecting to be martyred and sent to be with his 72 raisins.

I'm a bit more concerned than perhaps I should be about our justice system's mercies being used to paint us as gutless pussies, just as I'm troubled that our very freedoms and advantages were the pathways through which these fuckwit luzers have and will continue to attack us.

I'd hope that, should the appropriate time arrive, we as a country are able to tell when the line is crossed and it becomes "No more Mr. Nice Guy", at which point we pave over the parts of the world of Islam that need paving. Because we've always been at war with Eurabia.

Either that or we can declare war on airplanes.

Christian justice does not take the law as the standard of behavior. The imperfection of man makes internalizing the law not only impossible, but foolhardy and itself suspect. Mercy must come into the practice of justice, not just for the criminal, but for society as a whole. “Let he who is without sin” does not prevent the judgement of criminals, but problematizes their ultimate judgement on the basis of the sinfulness of all humanity. That is to say, society can pronounce the sentence of death, but cannot carry it out. Mercy was not just for the accused; it was for the accuser and the judge.

I don’t think there was a lot of Christian mercy in Zac decision. If the jurors could not satisfactorily see him as a contributor to the conspiracy, they were probably following good ole English law. No court asks jurors to consider whether they are qualified to sentence a man to death based on the merits of his case. In this case, there is instead an affirmation of the agency of the individual jurors, something which deserves validation in this war.

Mercy requires forgiveness requires repentance, at least where I come from. Additionally, I absolutely promise you we'll soon see a parade of hostages across the screen courtesy of Al-Jazeera, all seeking to be exchanged for the noble shahid Moussaoui. Still and all, I understand and respect your position while choosing to disagree.

BTW, recruiting parties for Regiment Hewlett und Packard are now prowling the drinking dens of Vienna, Prague, and Olmutz. The regimental colors are flying over the ramparts of my place </shamelessplug>.

Ken:

You'll find support, not that any is required, in Peggy">http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008330]Peggy Noonan's view of matters. She makes some good points, and it occurs to me that perhaps my response of "OK, that sounds right" would have been the same if the jury foreman had read the verdict and then immediately put a bullet directly into his brainpan.

Because it further occurs to me that, like Buckethead, I don't think this guy is the crux of anything meaningful, and like Ms. Noonan, "I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes."

Patton, are you suggesting that you would have been cool with the jury foreman reading the verdict and then shooting himself?

Damn, I hate using English like a second language. Pardon the imprecision. I meant his foot.